Financial Health Economics

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Koijen, Ralph S. J.; Philipson, Tomas J.; Uhlig, Harald
• 署名单位: University of London; London Business School; University of Chicago; University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: ECONOMETRICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0012-9682
• DOI: 10.3982/ECTA11182
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 195-242
• 关键词: cross-section; explanation; disasters; COSTS; LIFE

摘要

We provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the link between financial and real health care markets. This link is important as financial returns drive investment in medical research and development (R&D), which, in turn, affects real spending growth. We document a medical innovation premium of 4-6% annually for equity returns of firms in the health care sector. We interpret this premium as compensating investors for government-induced profit risk, and we provide supportive evidence for this hypothesis through company filings and abnormal return patterns surrounding threats of government intervention. We quantify the implications of the premium for the growth in real health care spending by calibrating our model to match historical trends, predicting the share of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to health care to be 32% in the long run. Policies that had removed government risk would have led to more than a doubling of medical R&D and would have increased the current share of health care spending by more than 3% of GDP.